Post-vacation ramblings
I haven't been at work in, like, half a lifetime. Actually, since last Wednesday, but I think this is my longest stretch out of the office since the Smelmooo and I went on our honeymoon. And it is nice. It's one of those stretches that makes me want desperately to win the lottery.
Before we officially kicked off the road trip last Friday, we had some errands to do in our home town: dry cleaners, video store, library, liquor store. We tend to divide and conquer, so while the Smelmooo hit the dry cleaners, I went to the convenience store for drinks for the car ride up (I had secured snacks for the trip earlier in the day, but totally forgot about drinks). And it took FOREVER because this woman who was three people ahead of me in line was buying dozens and dozens of lottery tickets, with very specific numbers. Finally, the clerk told her she'd need to hang on while he waited on his other customers. The other people in line ahead of me were also getting lottery tickets, but taking the random number-generation option. There was some confusion (feigned, I'm fairly sure) about which guy was first, and I kept thinking how, if either of them ended up winning, the other would be kicking himself, either for being so damned pushy in line or for being too much of a pushover and not fighting for his rightful place in line. But I'm guessing none of them won, not even the lady who probably ended up spending a hundred bucks, because I expect that's the sort of thing one hears about fairly quickly in a small town.
[I'm sure you're paying extra-close attention and wondering, if I haven't been to work since Wednesday, and we didn't leave until Friday, what the heck happened on Thursday? I played hooky and went to Great Adventure with Minnams, is what happened, and it was a great treat to enjoy quality time with her AND to ride the roller coasters, although I'm concerned that I'm now too old to ride the roller coasters. Ten years ago, I discovered I couldn't deal with spinny rides, but now I've mostly accepted that roller coasters -- even ones that don't spin OR go upside-down -- make me feel a little hungover. I may not have many more amusement park days left in me. But I was glad to see that some things haven't changed: people still, for some reason, feel inclined to make out while waiting in line for rides, and there are still cheesy couples who wear matching or coordinating t-shirts as they saunter through the park with their hands in each other's back pockets.]
Anyway, we made our way up to our friends' place in Massachusetts, where we crashed on Friday night before heading up to Maine on Saturday. The male half of the couple we visited is an old friend of the Smelmooo's; we'd last seen him and his family -- he and his wife have two boys, six and three, who are adorable and smart and funny -- on our way up to Maine last summer. And it turns out they're having a third kid, in three months, which we didn't know until we showed up. The other thing we hadn't known until fairly late in the game was that our friends had a family party on Friday night, a booze cruise for the birthday of someone we'd never met. And, it was sponsored by a country music radio station. Two words: line dancing. The Smelmooo posted a video to YouTube, so you can see for yourself.
The trip to Maine the following day was fairly uneventful; we stopped in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where I'd not been before, just to walk around, eat ice cream, and kill some time. And then we went to the L.L. Bean outlet, home to myriad fleece products and completely overpriced chocolate novelties (lobster-shaped chocolate popsicles, only four bucks apiece!).
And then, our home for the week, a cottage on a lake, where we stayed last summer, as well. I am really more of a beach person than a lake person (I think mostly because I grew up going to the beach; people who grew up going to lakes think that the ocean is stinky and dirty and gross, I'm sure), but I really like sitting on the dock by the lake, and looking at the lake, even though I don't especially enjoy swimming in it. But we fished (I caught zilch), and read a ton, and napped a ton (mostly me), and ate a ton, and hiked some (Tucker jumped/fell into a puddle at the summit), and relaxed a ton. We went to a country fair and watched some kind of competition involving donkey-training and another involving tractor-pulling by children (and, ha! A little girl kicked all the boys' asses).
When I was a kid, we were not allowed to watch television on vacation, except for the Olympics (and, even that, I think it was only the Los Angeles Olympics that I remember actually watching). I try to adhere to that rule, although I planned on making an exception for the convention, as well. And then, somehow, I only managed to stay awake for Hillary's speech. I watched Michelle's and Kennedy's online, and the Smelmooo kept trying to wake me up for Barack's, but that was one of the nights we drank wine, and I just could not keep my eyes open. And I can't imagine actually watching an hour-long speech online, or even reading the transcript, so there you have it.
We also watched Season 2 of Dexter (so, yeah, it seems that the no-TV rule is fairly arbitrary, after all), which I found incredibly satisfying. I felt relieved that there wasn't a cliffhanger ending to the season (the Smelmooo pointed out that it's never clear whether Showtime shows will get renewed, so they're more inclined to wrap things up fairly neatly at the end of a season), and I could not believe that they made me hate a character way more than I hated Deb in the first season (aka Lila), and that I actually did NOT hate Deb this season. I think it's not only because she's not Lila that I didn't hate her; she seemed actually not just to be a two-dimensional character with a potty mouth this year. Ask the Smelmooo about our experience purchasing the DVD the day it came out. It involved a car chase. Sort of.
So, that was vacation, in a nutshell. And today, I did some back-to-school shopping, even though I'm only going back to school if I win the lottery. But I got a couple of staples for my fall wardrobe, and lamented the lack of decent summer clothes on the sale racks. I finally retired the Target swimsuit I got in the spring of 2001, and I got citronella on the ass of my olive-colored shorts the first day of vacation, so I was hoping to replace both today, in part because I'm looking forward to our next warm-weather trip, to Hawaii in January. But no swimsuits to be found, and the only shorts I could find either fell below the knee or barely covered my girly bits. The only happy medium I could find cost 40 bucks, and I don't wear shorts frequently enough to justify that.
Next weekend: a surprise outing for my birthday, plus some long-overdue time at the Jersey Shore. I think I'll need it after a whole four days in the office next week.
Before we officially kicked off the road trip last Friday, we had some errands to do in our home town: dry cleaners, video store, library, liquor store. We tend to divide and conquer, so while the Smelmooo hit the dry cleaners, I went to the convenience store for drinks for the car ride up (I had secured snacks for the trip earlier in the day, but totally forgot about drinks). And it took FOREVER because this woman who was three people ahead of me in line was buying dozens and dozens of lottery tickets, with very specific numbers. Finally, the clerk told her she'd need to hang on while he waited on his other customers. The other people in line ahead of me were also getting lottery tickets, but taking the random number-generation option. There was some confusion (feigned, I'm fairly sure) about which guy was first, and I kept thinking how, if either of them ended up winning, the other would be kicking himself, either for being so damned pushy in line or for being too much of a pushover and not fighting for his rightful place in line. But I'm guessing none of them won, not even the lady who probably ended up spending a hundred bucks, because I expect that's the sort of thing one hears about fairly quickly in a small town.
[I'm sure you're paying extra-close attention and wondering, if I haven't been to work since Wednesday, and we didn't leave until Friday, what the heck happened on Thursday? I played hooky and went to Great Adventure with Minnams, is what happened, and it was a great treat to enjoy quality time with her AND to ride the roller coasters, although I'm concerned that I'm now too old to ride the roller coasters. Ten years ago, I discovered I couldn't deal with spinny rides, but now I've mostly accepted that roller coasters -- even ones that don't spin OR go upside-down -- make me feel a little hungover. I may not have many more amusement park days left in me. But I was glad to see that some things haven't changed: people still, for some reason, feel inclined to make out while waiting in line for rides, and there are still cheesy couples who wear matching or coordinating t-shirts as they saunter through the park with their hands in each other's back pockets.]
Anyway, we made our way up to our friends' place in Massachusetts, where we crashed on Friday night before heading up to Maine on Saturday. The male half of the couple we visited is an old friend of the Smelmooo's; we'd last seen him and his family -- he and his wife have two boys, six and three, who are adorable and smart and funny -- on our way up to Maine last summer. And it turns out they're having a third kid, in three months, which we didn't know until we showed up. The other thing we hadn't known until fairly late in the game was that our friends had a family party on Friday night, a booze cruise for the birthday of someone we'd never met. And, it was sponsored by a country music radio station. Two words: line dancing. The Smelmooo posted a video to YouTube, so you can see for yourself.
The trip to Maine the following day was fairly uneventful; we stopped in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where I'd not been before, just to walk around, eat ice cream, and kill some time. And then we went to the L.L. Bean outlet, home to myriad fleece products and completely overpriced chocolate novelties (lobster-shaped chocolate popsicles, only four bucks apiece!).
And then, our home for the week, a cottage on a lake, where we stayed last summer, as well. I am really more of a beach person than a lake person (I think mostly because I grew up going to the beach; people who grew up going to lakes think that the ocean is stinky and dirty and gross, I'm sure), but I really like sitting on the dock by the lake, and looking at the lake, even though I don't especially enjoy swimming in it. But we fished (I caught zilch), and read a ton, and napped a ton (mostly me), and ate a ton, and hiked some (Tucker jumped/fell into a puddle at the summit), and relaxed a ton. We went to a country fair and watched some kind of competition involving donkey-training and another involving tractor-pulling by children (and, ha! A little girl kicked all the boys' asses).
When I was a kid, we were not allowed to watch television on vacation, except for the Olympics (and, even that, I think it was only the Los Angeles Olympics that I remember actually watching). I try to adhere to that rule, although I planned on making an exception for the convention, as well. And then, somehow, I only managed to stay awake for Hillary's speech. I watched Michelle's and Kennedy's online, and the Smelmooo kept trying to wake me up for Barack's, but that was one of the nights we drank wine, and I just could not keep my eyes open. And I can't imagine actually watching an hour-long speech online, or even reading the transcript, so there you have it.
We also watched Season 2 of Dexter (so, yeah, it seems that the no-TV rule is fairly arbitrary, after all), which I found incredibly satisfying. I felt relieved that there wasn't a cliffhanger ending to the season (the Smelmooo pointed out that it's never clear whether Showtime shows will get renewed, so they're more inclined to wrap things up fairly neatly at the end of a season), and I could not believe that they made me hate a character way more than I hated Deb in the first season (aka Lila), and that I actually did NOT hate Deb this season. I think it's not only because she's not Lila that I didn't hate her; she seemed actually not just to be a two-dimensional character with a potty mouth this year. Ask the Smelmooo about our experience purchasing the DVD the day it came out. It involved a car chase. Sort of.
So, that was vacation, in a nutshell. And today, I did some back-to-school shopping, even though I'm only going back to school if I win the lottery. But I got a couple of staples for my fall wardrobe, and lamented the lack of decent summer clothes on the sale racks. I finally retired the Target swimsuit I got in the spring of 2001, and I got citronella on the ass of my olive-colored shorts the first day of vacation, so I was hoping to replace both today, in part because I'm looking forward to our next warm-weather trip, to Hawaii in January. But no swimsuits to be found, and the only shorts I could find either fell below the knee or barely covered my girly bits. The only happy medium I could find cost 40 bucks, and I don't wear shorts frequently enough to justify that.
Next weekend: a surprise outing for my birthday, plus some long-overdue time at the Jersey Shore. I think I'll need it after a whole four days in the office next week.
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